Boosting Childhood Cancer Radiotherapy in Latin America
PAHO, St. Jude and IAEA Join Forces

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From June 3 to 4, a regional meeting for Latin America and the Caribbean was held in Cancun, Mexico. It brought together health ministry representatives from 19 countries, along with experts from scientific societies, international organizations and foundations. Co-hosted by PAHO (the Pan American Health Organization), the United States' St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the meeting aimed to improve access to childhood cancer radiotherapy across the region. The following day, on June 5, its outcomes were formally presented at the Pediatric Radiation Oncology Society world congress (PROS 2026) held in the same city.

A Geographic Gap That Can Cost Lives

Cancer is a disease whose survival rates vary dramatically depending on where a child is born. In high-income countries, the five-year survival rate for childhood cancer exceeds 80%, while in low- and middle-income countries it often falls below half. Many Latin American nations fall into the latter category, and the shortage of radiotherapy facilities and the sheer scarcity of trained specialists have long been recognized as serious problems.

The meeting took place under the framework of the Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC) and the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines (GPACCM), both promoted by PAHO, St. Jude and the IAEA. The GICC, launched by the WHO in 2018, aims to raise the global childhood cancer survival rate to 60% by 2030.

The IAEA Brings 'Rays of Hope'

Through an initiative called Rays of Hope, the IAEA works to expand radiotherapy and nuclear medicine services in low- and middle-income countries. At the Cancun meeting, the program's progress in Latin America was shared.

What the participating experts emphasized was the severity of a particular problem: having the equipment but no one able to use it. The absolute number of radiation oncologists is small, and medical physicists who can maintain and manage the equipment are in short supply too. Simply installing machines does not deliver treatment. How to build a system that advances workforce training and facility development in parallel emerged as a challenge shared across the region.

Falling Through the Cracks: Children with Disabilities

Among those requiring special care are children with disabilities who also have cancer. Their diagnosis is often delayed, and cooperating with examinations can be difficult. Radiotherapy requires the patient to stay still during irradiation, so children with severe intellectual disabilities or autism spectrum conditions frequently need treatment under general anesthesia. Facilities capable of that specialized response remain limited even within Latin America.

Making visible the patients who fall through these 'cracks in the system,' and deciding how the region as a whole can fill the gaps, was not a theme the meeting addressed directly. But the deeper the discussion of access inequality goes, the more unavoidable this issue becomes.

The Seeds of a Latin American Model

At the same time, there is real promise in this effort. Having the health ministries of 19 countries gather in one place to share challenges around facilities, workforce training and drug procurement is a first step toward building the foundation of a functioning regional network. Latin America is a region of stark inequality in medical resources, but a model of sharing experience within the region and scaling up successful cases is beginning to grow. Efforts to extend the medical and educational infrastructure of countries like Brazil and Cuba to their neighbors have existed for some time, but having an international organization act as broker, as in this case, represents a new kind of structure. This pattern of cooperation is of a piece with PAHO's regional humanitarian response during outbreaks and disasters, suggesting PAHO is increasingly taking on the role of bridge-builder across the region's many sectors.

My Perspective

The reality that 'your odds of surviving are decided by where you are born' is just as true in the world of assistive devices. Living in Costa Rica and observing the systems on the ground, what struck me was that even within Latin America, crossing a single border can drastically change the quality of care you can receive. Childhood cancer radiotherapy is, I think, the field where that geographic gap appears in its cruelest form. That is precisely why it matters so much that PAHO, St. Jude and the IAEA have now joined hands across borders. Drawing a single map of where the equipment is, and carrying experience to the places that lack it. The accumulation of that unglamorous work, I sense, is what will ultimately move the number that is a child's survival rate.

And what I want to stress is the point that 'people matter more than equipment.' You can install the latest radiotherapy machine, but without radiation oncologists who can operate it and medical physicists who can manage the dose, the machine will not run. This is exactly the same structure as the rehabilitation field: even with fine orthoses and devices, without professionals who can fit and adjust them, nothing reaches the patient. On top of that, children with disabilities are prone to falling through the 'cracks in the system' at every stage of diagnosis, examination and treatment. I have seen many times in the field how treatment options narrow for a child simply because they cannot stay still or because communication is difficult. When we talk about access, how we pick up the people least able to raise their voices, and whether we can build that perspective into the design of a regional network, is what determines fairness in the truest sense.

Glossary

Rays of Hope = an IAEA initiative to expand radiotherapy access in low- and middle-income countries. GICC (Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer) = a WHO effort launched in 2018 aiming to raise the childhood cancer survival rate to 60% by 2030. radioterapia = the Spanish word for 'radiotherapy.'

That a child's chance of survival is decided by where they were born must never become the norm for the children of Latin America.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.